John Brooks clutched a photo of his daughter, Casey, showing the 17-year-old smiling as she posed for her high school senior portrait shortly before she jumped to her death from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Brooks and his wife, Erika, returned Thursday to the iconic Art Deco span to commemorate the beginning of construction on a suicide deterrent system they hope will spare other families the pain they’ve endured since Casey’s death Jan. 29, 2007.

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“Casey was a fighter,” said Brooks of Larkspur. “She had a big heart, she was a deep thinker. And she was ruthlessly honest ... with the emphasis on ruthlessly.”

Joining Brooks and his wife Thursday were a handful of other parents and friends whose loved ones also committed suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other Bay Area officials were also on hand to launch the construction on what will essentially be a stainless steel net running the length of the 8,981-foot bridge and sticking out 20 feet on both sides to catch anyone attempting to take their life.

“What a bittersweet day this is,” said Pelosi, D-San Francisco, adding that the families gathered “turned their grief into a powerful call for action on our beloved bridge.”

The project will cost $211 million and will be funded by state and federal money from several agencies, including Caltrans, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Golden Gate Transportation Commission, and the state Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission.

“People would say to us, ‘Isn’t that a lot of money for a barrier? For a net?’ And I would say, ‘No it’s not a lot of money for a life. For all of these lives,’” said Pelosi, who wore a “Suicide Deterrent System” pin with a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge on the collar of her blue blazer.

The audience agreed.

“We did it, everybody!” one man in the crowd said enthusiastically.

From January to July 2016, there were 133 attempted suicides on the bridge — 112 of those were stopped by Bridge Patrol officers, while 21 people leaped to their deaths, according to officials.

“This net is a net whose time has really come,” said Feinstein, D-Calif. “What you’re doing here, what the bridge is doing and what the taxpayers are doing will hopefully turn that number to zero.”

The number of people under the age of 25 who annually come to the bridge to contemplate suicide has increased from nine in 2000 to 43 in 2014, and that number is expected to be even higher this year, according to the Bridge Patrol Department of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

“It was just really kind of a fog,” Brooks said of when the coroner came to his home in Larkspur to notify him of his daughter’s death. “We had no idea that this was such a suicide magnet.”

His daughter, who was a senior at Redwood High School in Larkspur, was a voracious debater, tackling every subject from politics to whether her teeth needed to be photoshopped to appear whiter in her senior portrait (they were).

“She was a typical teenager. Everything Mom and Dad had to say was wrong. And it was her job to set us straight,” Brooks said, laughing as he recalled memories of his daughter.

Contractors Shimmick Construction, an Oakland company, and Danny’s Construction, a San Francisco company, will work on the project together.

The completion of the deterrent net, on which work is scheduled to begin in earnest in mid-2018, is projected to be completed January 2021.

Kymberlyrenee Gamboa spoke to the crowd huddled under a tent as she held a photo of her son, Kyle, who died in 2013 at the age of 18.

“Soon, no family will experience the devastation and tragedy of a suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge,” Gamboa said, her voice cracking as she attempted to stifle her tears.